Kentucky’s Dombrowski changes for the better

Those hitters who faced Greg Dombrowski when he was a high school and American Legion pitcher for Rome Free Academy and Smith Post probably wouldn’t recognize him today.

Ron Moshier

Those hitters who faced Greg Dombrowski when he was a high school and American Legion pitcher for Rome Free Academy and Smith Post probably wouldn’t recognize him today.

Not with a bat in their hands.

A lot has changed since then, from his grip, to his delivery, to how he gets the job done.

He is still getting it done, though, and he’s doing it for a nationally ranked, University of Kentucky baseball team hoping to make the College World Series for the first time in school history.

In four seasons at Kentucky, Dombrowski, an overpowering right-hander with a fastball in the 90-mph range when he was in high school, has relied on his control and the late movement of an 82-mph sinker to get batters out. It’s working again this season – in five starts, he is 4-0 with a 1.75 ERA – and his career mark of 21-4 makes him Kentucky’s all-time leader with a winning percentage of .840.

“Greg Dombrowski is a much better pitcher now than he was then, and I’d guess I’d have to emphasize the word ‘pitcher,’” he said in a telephone interview earlier this week. “In high school, I was able to throw the ball by people, and I had a pretty good curveball. Now, I’m throwing a lot of sinkers and getting a lot of ground balls.

“I’ve really changed how I pitch. I’m more of a sinker-slider kind of guy now.”

At the urging of pitching coach Gary Henderson, he made that transformation as a Kentucky freshman. Back then, Dombrowski was a member of his first recruiting class at Kentucky, and Henderson saw him as “a guy I could build a staff around.”

After his first two bullpen sessions, though, Henderson said it was obvious some adjustments had to be made.

Fortunately, Dombrowski was open to change.

“Clearly, something had to happen. He was going to have to change his style,” said Henderson. “It would’ve been real easy for him to put his tail between his legs and go home. But at no point in time did he fight it. It wasn’t smooth sailing the entire way, but he responded.

“It’s a tremendously difficult thing to do. You’re changing the whole pitching process. You ask 100 kids to do that, and there’s not five who can do it. You’re going from throwing the ball by the bat to pitching to contact. Now, the earlier the contact in the at-bat, the better. The fewer pitches the batter gets to see, the better. Changing that thought process isn’t easy. What he’s done is really phenomenal.”

In retrospect, Dombrowski believes the changes Henderson asked him to make were “all for the better.”

He made 16 appearances as a Kentucky freshman, including a complete-game victory over Murray State in his only start. He’s been the Wildcats’ Sunday starter ever since, and this season, he’s helped Kentucky – ranked as high as No. 2 in the country after a 19-0 start – go 21-2 heading into this weekend’s series at South Carolina.

“I had a lot to learn here,” Dombrowski said. “I obviously had to get better to pitch at this level, and I realize I had to make some changes. I just saw it as a challenge, an opportunity to prove myself.”

At RFA, he was an all-state pitcher who won two Section III championship games for the Black Knights. His junior season ended with a 1-0 loss to Union-Endicott in the semifinals of the Class AA state tournament.

“It’s totally different here,” said Dombrowski. “You see plenty of guys throwing 92 to 95 (miles per hour) and they can’t get anybody out. It’s not all about velocity. It’s more about location and movement. It’s extremely important to keep the ball down and create more movement.

“My game plan is to keep the ball on the ground. I’m a control pitcher who has to keep the ball down. I want them to swing the bat as early in the count as possible. I’m looking to throw a quality strike right away. I want the ball in play as quickly as possible.”

As a Kentucky sophomore, Dombrowski went 10-2 with a 2.83 ERA in 15 starts, including five wins over ranked opponents, and the Wildcats won their first-ever SEC title. The 10 wins were the fourth-best in school history, the most since 1987, and he earned second-team All-South Region honors.

Last year, he earned preseason All-America honors, and despite a sore back that affected his stamina and conditioning, he finished 5-2 with a 5.12 ERA.

“I’m certainly not going to make excuses. It was just something I had to deal with,” Dombrowski said of last year’s back ailment. “It was a challenge, but it never kept me from making any of my starts and it’s no longer a problem. I conditioned real hard this summer and I’m feeling a lot more confident about where I stand physically.”

For the second straight year, Dombrowski has been named to the watch list for the Roger Clemens National Pitcher of the Year Award given annually to the top pitcher in college baseball.

On Wednesday, Dombrowski was nominated for the H. Boyd McWhorter Scholar-Athlete Post-Graduate Scholarship presented by the SEC since 1986 to the league’s top male and female scholar-athlete. The kinesiology major has a 3.52 grade-point average. He is a three-time member of the SEC Academic Honor Roll and has been named to the Kentucky Dean’s List and the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll. He also is a member of Delta Epsilon Iota, which recognizes academic excellence and strong leadership qualities, and the Golden Key International Honor Society. He also earned ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District honors and he is an inductee into the UK Frank G. Ham Society of Character.

In the preseason, Dombrowski was named by Baseball America as the SEC pitcher with the best control – he once went 58.1 innings without walking a batter – for the second year in a row.

Controlling a two-seam fast ball Kentucky head coach John Cohen says “has as much sink as anything I’ve ever seen” is an art in itself.

“It’s that power sink that he has. … It’s explosive,” said Cohen. “When you can get SEC hitters out with an 80 or 82 mph fast ball, that means you’ve got something really, really special. It’s hard to catch, let alone hit. He’s a below-average velocity guy by SEC standards and he’s winning at the highest level of college baseball. He’s a figure-it-out guy. He’s going to figure out how to get guys out.

Is he everything in a pitcher that a major league scout is looking for? A 5-foot-11, 170-pounder with a fast ball in the low 80s?

Probably not, but Cohen and Dombrowski certainly aren’t giving up draft day hope.

“We don’t talk about it. We talk about his next start,” Cohen said. “There’s no question he can win at the professional level, the issue is going to be, is someone going to give him the opportunity? Scouts are going to have to look beyond the velocity issue. It’s going to have to be someone who has seen him a lot, who appreciates how he gets it done, because he’s really unique. There just aren’t a lot of guys like him at this level.”

Dombrowski, who turns 22 on Sunday – when he is scheduled to start against nationally-ranked South Carolina – says some scouts have shown an interest in him, despite the “velocity issue.”

“They might look at that a little bit too much,” he said. “But with the success I’ve had. …. I just hope they look at the overall quality and consistency I’ve shown over the last four years. I just hope that’s enough.

“I’ve had a pretty good career here so far. I’ll just have to see how things work out. The recruiting class I came in here with has really helped build the program. We’ve helped put Kentucky baseball on the map. Now, it’s my senior year and we have a chance to bring this team to the College World Series for the first time. That’s my goal right now.”